


The world could end at any moment

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Betrayal, Child Abandonment, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Team as Family, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 20:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20319181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Larry remembers the Ant Farm and all the pain that lead up to it. He remembers losing everything he loved, everything he was, to his scarred skin and new, interdimensional passenger. He remembers the look on John's face when Larry sent him away. He remembers the way Sheryl said goodbye. He remembers the moment his life ended for good.And now... Niles is the one who caused it all?





	The world could end at any moment

Larry remembered the Ant Farm.

Remembered the Buearo breaking down his body just to get at the thing living inside of him, the Spirit who had ruined his life in so many ways and ensured that Larry was entirely alone. He remembered the testing, and he remembered what it felt like to be looked at like that through the thick double-paned glass. He remembered the pain and the fear and the desperation at wanting to break free, but back then, the Spirit was a lot less helpful.

Sometimes, his bones tingle and his soul screams with the memory of the pain that he still dreamt about and that the Negative Spirit still sent him memories filled with blood and anger and his own screams, and now after everything with Niles, the dreams have gotten more real and more persistent. The Spirit- Keeg, apparently the thing living inside of him had a name- didn’t like all the lies Niles had told them.

Keeg hated Niles almost as much as Larry did. They had both been ruined that day, handed the short end of the stick with Niles experiments, and they had both been ripped away from their homes and everything they had ever known to be nothing but Niles’ lab rat.

Often, Larry would stand in front of his mirror, his ruined skin bare to the world, and he would wonder if he was as ugly before the accident. The accident that was no longer an accident. The accident that Niles caused just for his own-

He would look in the mirror, and hate the very sight of himself, and wonder why John had fallen in love with him, why Sheryl had ever married him, why they both loved him enough to stay with him and say goodbye when the only thing he deserved was to be all alone.

Deserved. That was a fickle thing. What did Larry deserve? He deserved to be treated like dirt on the bottom of someone’s shoe, deserved to be left alone in a ditch to die from his sadness, deserved to have an inter-spatial being inhabiting his body and burning up his insides. He deserved to be alone.

He’d had a conversation with Rita one day, back when they were on their way to find the Chief, and they had just pulled into the tiny, two-bed hotel room. The others were already inside, Vic and Cliff arguing about beds and Jane off somewhere getting food (why anyone had trusted Jane and her other personalities to be alone long enough to order food was a mystery to him, but it worked out, in the end) and he just knew that Rita was probably in the bathroom, willing her body to stay solid in front of the others.

Larry didn’t go into the room because he had already decided, unfortunately, that he would be spending a sleepless night in the bus, so the others could sleep in peace without having to worry about radiation seeping into their skin through the night. Larry wouldn’t dare unwind his bandages, especially out of the comfort of his room, but the risk was still there.

He had just found a relatively comfy seat to settle into, no springs sticking through the fabric or tears in the leather when there was a sharp knock on the window that didn’t stop until he marched over to throw open the door and glare out into the darkness.

Rita was there, as she always was, with her hands on her hips and her lips pursed. “Do you want to tell me what the hell you’re doing out here?”

Sighing, Larry ran a hand over his head. “Rita, I don’t have the energy for this. I’m tired. Just go back inside.”

“Yeah, well, I want a nice strong drink, but we don’t always get what we want. And if you were really tired, you’d be inside with us, getting ready to sleep.” Rita was never shy of Larry- she didn’t care if she hurt him to get to the bottom of his problems. “Now are you going to tell me what’s really going on or do I have to get Cliff to drag you out of this bus and back inside that shitty motel?”

“Rita-”

She ignored him. “It’s got nothing to do with you nearly killing us today, does it? Because sure, when it happened we were all a little bit inconsolable, but we all know that it wasn’t your fault.”

“Because I’m a monster, Rita!” Larry threw his arms out to his side and the Spirit glowed warningly in his chest. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t even breathe without worrying about turning you all into liquid! So I’m going to sleep in the van tonight, Rita, because I’m sick and tired of hurting the people I care about.”

That had obviously been the wrong thing to say because the look on Rita’s face was almost frightening. “Well then,” she huffed. “I suppose I too, am a monster, considering I only have a physical form 40% of the time and the other 60% I turn into a giant puddle of goop that swallows everything it comes in contact with, so in that case, I shall stay with you out here in the bus, because that’s where monsters belong, yes? I should call Jane, too, and Cliff while I’m at it. I could get Vic but he’s always been better than the rest of us so-”

“Fine,” Larry gave in eventually because he never could out-argue Rita when she got going. “Fine. Have it your way.”

Which is how Larry had ended up sharing a tiny bed with Vic, Jane and Rita in another one, and Cliff standing off to the side reluctantly powered down, his version of sleeping. The Spirit hadn’t been happy, but then again, it never was.

But now Larry knew that the reason he was a monster was because of the man he used to call his mentor, his friend, an ally, and both he and Keeg hated him for it.

Larry knew next to nothing about the situations that made any of his friends what they were. Well, he knew Rita, because he had known Rita for the longest, and sometimes when they didn’t have anything to talk to they would just… chat about a time long ago, that ruined more than just their lives. He knew that Cliff got into a car crash, and he had no idea how Niles was involved in that. Was he driving the other vehicle that collided with Cliff’s? And Jane, did Niles give her all her 64 other personalities or was he the reason they all had powers, or none of that at all, or something much sicker? Did he cause the explosion that rendered Vic’s body and killed his mother? What the hell had he done to ensure that Larry himself lost control of his plane at the same time that the Spirit had been up there, waiting to merge with something more than himself?

Thinking about it made Larry angry, so angry that sometimes he could feel the Spirit roiling within him, sharing his fury. How dare this man take away all the greatness in Larry’s life for his own selfish gain? Sure, maybe Larry wasn’t all that happy back then and maybe he was a bit of a dick and just maybe he didn’t really have a life worth living, but it was his life. And Niles took that away from him.

Took John away from him.

Some nights it took everything Larry had within him to stop himself from screaming, from sobbing wet spots into his bandages and clawing at his already ruined skin, cursing the world and Niles Calder and John for even loving him in the first place, because Larry wouldn’t have been so upset if he had never been loved.

But on his worst days, on the days when the pain and the memories and the suffering become unbearable, he cooked.

He loved to cook, loved to take his mind off of everything and focus on not singeing his bandages or just staying conscious through the whole thing. He’s always been able to cook, but now, with nothing but time on his side, he’s learned how to do be a good cook, and then a great cook, and now he called himself a chief- not a real one, not really- because he had to be in order to make enough food for Rita.

Keeg had been behaving more often than not. Instead of dropping Larry onto whatever inconvenient, often dangerous and most painful place he could think of, now Keeg just waited until Larry was ready and deposited him on a couch or something. It still hurt, when Keeg would rock his body with the force of his expulsion, but at least Larry would wake up with something comfortable under his back.

Even though at the beginning, Larry had a bit of the love-hate relationship with the dreams the Spirit used to give him. Sure, he got to see John, the love of his life, alive again, just as he knew him, but Larry also knew that they weren’t real and would never be real again and couldn’t understand why the Spirit was hurting him like that.

But now, it was a gift. They could talk, Larry with the Spirit or Larry with John or whatever he wanted to think of it, but he got to see John, and the Spirit got to voice his pain, and Larry got to understand.

It wasn’t perfect. Nothing in his life could ever be perfect, but now that he and the resident inside him had established some sort of boundaries and meant of communication, their relationship was almost… peaceful. Something close to friendship, if only a slightly forced one, but a friendship all the same. Larry never had a friend like Keeg.

If he was being honest, Rita was the one who helped him take his mind off of the Chief and all his bullshit. When the pain would get too much and the memories would plague him, Rita would find him and whisk him away to… wherever.

She was honest with him when he couldn’t even be honest with himself, and stern with him when he needed it, but gentle when he craved it. She understood everything, in her own way, and understood the pain he was in. Maybe not about the bonding with an interdimensional being and being taken and tortured by the Buearo, but she understood about losing trust in the Chief because she had lost her own.

Today she had dragged him into the room where they mainly had a showing of all her favourite movies, but the TV wasn’t on, and in her hands were a remote would be was instead two glasses filled with alcohol. Larry took one without prompting, because god, he needed a drink.

He trusted Rita, and they had known each other long enough for Larry not to be worried about exposing her to any of the radiation within his body. Well, maybe that wasn’t the right word. He was still cautious, but he lifted the bandage across his mouth just enough for him to drink without worrying about liquefying her. They clashed their glasses together, and then they drank, and then they talked.

“I think,” she said, swirling the whisky around in her glass. “That I haven’t thought about Niles in this way before. I mean, I’ve thought about him, and sometimes he makes me infuriated with the nonsense that he comes up with, but I’ve never thought about him with such _hatred_ before.”

Keeg liked Rita- well, he liked all of the people who lived under their roof, but he had a soft spot for Rita. She was the only person he listened to, sometimes more than Larry himself, and if the feeling wasn’t like, it was obviously strong respect.

“I know,” Larry replied. “And now, he’s got a kid? I mean, I don’t care that she’s got a face like a monkey or that she can turn her imagination into reality, but now we’ve got to deal with the man we thought was our friend also having a daughter with some ancient woman we never knew anything about? Maybe he could have started by just telling us what happened.”

“I’m just…” Rita mused, so angry she was almost seething- Larry knew her well enough to know that she was barely holding it in. “He ruined my life- _our_ lives, for his own selfish gain, or because he was told to, or whatever, but now we’ve been forced to deal with the consequences and he didn’t even think twice about what that would do to us.”

Larry shook his head and placed a hand over his chest when Keeg began to glow under his bandages, mirroring Larry’s anger and frustration. “I lost Sheryl and John and my kids and my career and my body because of him. I don’t know how he did it, but that day, Niles took more from me than my solidarity and independence.”

Sighing, Rita ran a hand through her hair, strands slightly sticking upright, and her leg began to lose its shape, sinking sickly towards the floor, dragged down by gravity. “I can’t stand being in front of a mirror let alone a camera. I keep pictures of myself from before… the accident around my room just so I can put my face back together the way it’s supposed to be.”

“It’s almost like…” Larry almost couldn’t bring himself to say it, it made him that angry. “Like he knew what would happen if he did what he did, but he still went through with it. Still decided to take our lives away.”

Rita tipped her glass back and swallowed half of her whisky in one gulp. “I don’t even know what kind of fucked-up shit he did to the others. Cliff is just a brain in a tin can, his wife was killed, and his daughter was orphaned and grew up to believe that her parents didn’t love her. Vic lost half his body in a brutal explosion and his mother was killed, and he believed that it was his fault. And Jane…” she trailed off, looking to the ground and tightening her fingers around her glass.

They hadn’t seen Jane in days. Not since they figured out how to reverse the shrinkage. She had hidden away in her bedroom, every one of her personalities screaming in anger, but she hadn’t come out yet. “We don’t know what Niles did to Jane,” Larry said eventually. “She had all the others in her already, right? He didn’t do that. Was he the one who gave them all their powers? I don’t know.”

Shaking her head, Rita downed the rest of her whisky and hand a heavy hand across her face. The ice clinked against the empty glass. “Who knows? Not me, at least. Either way, she’s not all that happy with him either. I’m suddenly seeing some of her… people that I’ve never seen before, so maybe they’re just as angry as the rest of us.”

“Maybe,” Larry shrugged. He still had some liquor left in his glass. Unlike Rita, he hardly ever got to just sit back and enjoy it. “But either way, I don’t think any of us are going to forgive Niles too quickly. Not me, anyway. The rest of you can do whatever the fuck you want.”

Rita looked like she wanted to bang her head hard against the nearest object. “It’s just… it’s so hard to hate someone who you care so much about. I’ve always had a soft spot for Niles since he saved me and for everything he’s done since then- learning that he’s the reason I needed to be saved at all and that everything I knew about him was a lie… well. It just makes me question who the man I knew for all those years was, I suppose.”

She sat with him while he finished his drink in thoughtful silence, and when she realized that Larry wasn’t willing to continue the conversation any longer, she made up some polite excuse about going to check up on Cliff and left him alone with his thoughts and his Spirit.

Larry and Keeg didn’t agree on much, not often. They both liked Rita. They both trusted Vic. They both felt sorry for Jane. They both understood Cliff. They both hated Niles.

Funny, how the only thing they ever managed to agree upon involved the people in their lives. Larry didn’t go a single day without seeing or interacting with at least four of those people, so he supposed that Keeg had to figure out how he felt. It’s not like Larry got to see other people.

They weren’t quite sure how to live with themselves, at the moment. Every night, Larry was plagued by nightmares induced by memories of the Ant Farm despite Keeg’s attempts to block them out with images of John’s face or the feeling of his lips against Larry’s own, but now knowing that the very man who had caused all that, the very reason Larry couldn’t get even touch anyone without worrying about them turning to ash, was living under the same roof as him, pretending to be a friend, all the while knowing about all the pain Larry had to live with? What kind of sick bastard-

It didn’t matter. Not really. Because while Niles was a steaming pile of shit, he had a daughter, a little girl who hardly knew what it was like to grow up with people who cared about her. Danny was great, but they weren’t a parent, they couldn’t touch and teach and love her as a father could. Keeping her safe and happy was all well and good, but at some point, it wasn’t enough.

So Larry would talk to the girl. He would play with her, and tell her stories of flying through the sky in a bird made of metal 20 times the size as him, and sit by her side as she painted out her dreams and he would laugh and he would pretend like everything was alright, because while he hated Niles, his daughter didn’t deserve to pay for the sins of her father.

Keeg wasn’t happy with it, but he rarely was, and Larry had gotten good over the years at ignoring him. His opinion didn’t really matter in the long run. What was he going to do, drop Larry down another flight of stairs to get his point across?

He didn’t care. Until he could figure out how the hell he felt, he would play with little Dorothy, he would watch old black and white movies with Rita, he would argue good-naturedly with Cliff, he would attend Vic’s usual too-early meetings, he would indulge Jane and her many personalities, and until he could decide how much he hated Niles and if he was willing to forgive him, he would be the man everyone knew him to be, and pretend like nothing was wrong.

He’s been through worse, anyway.


End file.
